How Love Brought a Worldwide Satanist Leader to God

An interview with Jacob Mckelvy, founder and former leader of the worldwide Greater Church of Lucifer.

By Wesley Baines

Jacob Mckelvy Ministries

Pain.

It’s one of the few things that can truly push a human being to change. It is a void into which something rushes, and each person who hurts has to make the choice of what they allow in, of what they allow to change them.

All too often, though, what we allow in is a lie.

When Jacob Mckelvy found himself as a 9-year-old in a field, anguishing over his younger sister’s snakebite death, his own void opened up. This set him on a years-long path of pain which would result in his founding Greater Church of Lucifer, which now has branches in Latin America, Canada, and Europe.

But in 2016, after years of running a worldwide Satanist religion, Mckelvy finally found peace in Christ and gave it all up, accepting Christ and getting baptized.

And it was all because of love. We had the opportunity to speak with Mckelvy about his experiences in the Greater Church of Lucifer, details about his role, and the overwhelming power that drew him back to the light.

Let’s see what he has to say.

What led you to found the Greater Church of Lucifer?

It was a very long progression of feeling hopelessness and pain and rejection. I have a degree in psychology, so I’ve been psychoanalyzing this for a couple of years now, actually—why did I go this route? This is what I’ve come up with.

I’ve notice a trend in every major occultist, and I started doing the cross-referencing of Anton LaVey and Alistair Crowley and a lot of the people that I met, and we all have one thing in common: the feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness of the world around us.

You were raised a Mormon—what was it that drove you away from God?

There are a lot of things that are hooked up to this of why I would feel this way. Anna, my [deceased] sister was my best friend. I have another sister who is autistic, blind, and severely autistic—she has very low social skills. So my parents focused her. I understand that now, but as a child that’s really hard to get—it’s all about attention for a child. My parents focused on her, so I felt neglected there.

I went out into a field, and I kind of had a concept of what Jesus Christ was, what God was, based on the Mormon faith. So I had a concept of that—I heard, “Well, she’s with Jesus now, or “She’s with God now, our heavenly father.” The way I thought then was “If He allowed this to happen, then what good is He?”

Then He becomes my enemy.

Anna was the only person I had in my life that I felt loved by. My mom would tell me stories about how when Anna was born, she’d find me in the crib with my arm around her. From infancy to when she was three years old, we did everything together—we even made stupid mix tapes together. I’ve still got those.

That was a huge impact on my life, and that was the downward spiral.

My power was taken away from me, everything was taken away from me at that very instant—it was a complete world, upside-down. I understood what death was for the first time. I understood my own mortality. It was a huge thing for a nine-year-old boy to grow up so quickly. So God, at that point, became my enemy.

In middle school, I was a heavy kid, and I was bullied a great deal and tried to commit suicide a few times over that, so there’s still that powerlessness and hopelessness still continuing.

The human response to death is normal, but the rest of it, just continued out through life, everything being ripped away from you, being made fun of to the point of wanting to kill yourself.

I started really seeing Satan as something I could identify with because he was an outcast. And so I started identifying as the outcast at that point, which actually mirrors Alistair Crowley. He was picked on because he was overweight, too.

I’ve interviewed several occult leaders, and this seems like a story I’ve heard over and over.

Right—it’s something that we all know way too well.

Was your involvement in the Luciferian movement in any way a response to organized religion?

I saw a herd-like mentality that I could not associate with. I tried my best to be a good little Mormon boy to please my father. I did my best. But with that comes a psychological form of abuse—feeling guilty about everything all the time, especially becoming a teenage boy with hormones raging, feeling guilty and disgusting about my body and sexuality. I was told that it was sinful and that I should be ashamed of myself.

That really took a huge toll on me because I felt like I was dirty, that I was unworthy. That I wasn’t worthy of God’s love, so why care?

Once you founded the Greater Church of Lucifer, what was your role like?

I created it in my garage—it started off very small and started to snowball after that. I didn’t realize just how big of an impact it would have. I didn’t define myself as anything at that point—I didn’t have a title or anything. It wasn’t until we started filing for non-profit status and I brought on three other leaders to help me that we actually had titles. Our title was that of an Archon—“a world leader.”